Now about my raise ...
Feel like you're falling behind in these hard economic
times? Why not become Chief Executive Officer of a Fortune 500
company?
The pay can't be beat. In 2000, the average annual pay of
the top 10 U.S. CEOs was $154 million.
While most working women and men struggled to keep up with
inflation during the last two decades, corporate chiefs made
out like, well, bandits.
In his new book, "Wealth and Democracy," Kevin Phillips
compares the earnings of workers and CEOs from 1981 through
2000. Phillips' study gives more proof of how the gap between
rich and poor makes the Grand Canyon look like a pothole.
He found that on average, workers' wages doubled between
1981 and 2000. Sounds good, right? But after inflation, there
was very little real gain for most workers.
Workers in some of the lowest-paying jobs actually made less
in real dollars than they did 20 years earlier.
And the top bosses? In 1981 they were making a paltry $3.5
million a year. But you can't keep a good thief down.
In the years from 1981 to 2000, executive compensation rose
4,300 percent.
Yeah. That's right: 4,300 percent.
Keep that in mind the next time you need to ask for a
raise.
--G.B.
Reprinted from the June 27, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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Email: ww@workers.org
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